Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I want to use my short time to amplify the voices of survivors of these hellish church–State institutions. Repeatedly in the report, their voices are denigrated. Despite harrowing survivor testimonies of abuse, the report states there was "very little evidence of physical abuse" of women, and it downplays the physical abuse of children. On forced adoptions, it essentially states the many woman who have testified that their children were forcibly taken from them are lying. It states:

Some of this cohort of women are of the opinion that their consent was not full, free and informed. However, ... there is no evidence that this was their view at the time of the adoption.

Contrast this with what the Irish First Mothers group says:

The massive abuse they suffered was the forced removal of their child. The Commission is blind to the most grievous injury which was the reason for the inquiry in the first place.

This most grievous injury has been entirely excluded from the very limited consideration of redress for survivors, only some of whom are to be compensated at all and then only for abuse and forced labour, not forced adoption. The Coalition of Mother and Baby Home Survivors states "up to 15,000 people may have been illegally adopted by rogue adoption agencies who were allowed free reign back in the day and now have been given a free pass to escape their criminal behaviour". The Government and commission have essentially thrown them under a bus and walked away. They are correct that the commission's report whitewashes foreign and illegal adoptions, which should be the subject of a separate inquiry. Why did this happen? It was not because of some collective pathology on the part of society as a whole, as the establishment parties who oversaw it at the time would have us believe; it was because the ruling class in this country - the church, the State's officials, the establishment parties and their wealthy supporters — wanted to minimise their financial responsibility for what they saw as a surplus population of impoverished women and children. That is why they did not care about the thousands of deaths and the shockingly high mortality rates. Their only real concern then and now has been to limit the financial cost. Church and State might be forced to apologise but they still do not want to pay. We must ensure that this time, they do not get away with it. As Claire McGettrick of the Clann Project has said:

In 2013, once the Magdalene apology came, nobody (apart from ... [a few]) was interested in what an insult the McAleese Report was to the women's lived experiences. This time feels different - this time we have a movement.

Finally, the assets of the religious orders responsible should be seized. They should be used to compensate survivors for all the harm that they suffered. The church and State must be fully separated, and institutions such as the Bon Secours, which have devastated so many lives, should no longer have any role in healthcare or the education of children.

See this speech in context